All Quiet Quotes for Discussion Chapters 7 (part 2) and 8

“The names of the stations begin to take on meaning and my heart trembles…The names mark the boundaries of my youth.” Chapt 7 – page 154

“Bremerstrasse-Bremerstrasse—Bremerstrasse” Chapt 7 – pg 155

“A red-cross sister offers me something to drink. I turn away, she smiles at me too foolishly, so obsessed with her own importance: “Just look, I am giving a soldier coffee!” She calls me “Comrade,” but I will have none of it. Chapter 7 page 156

[going up the stairs of his old house: I take off my helmet and look up. Yes, it is my eldest sister…my rifle is so heavy…I support myself with the butt of my rifle against my feet…” Chapter 7 – page 157

Above me on the wall hangs the glass case with the coloured butterflies that I once collected. Chapter 7 Page 158

“You are at home, you are at home.” But a sense of strangeness will not leave me, I cannot feel at home amongst these things…There is a distance, a veil between us.” Chapter 7 – page 160

Was it bad you ask.—You, Mother, -- I shake my head and say: “No, Mother, not so very. There are always a lot of us togetehr so it isn’t so bad.” Chapter 7 Page 161

“Can’t you salute?”[the major] blusters. I would like to hit min in the face, but control myself, for my leave depends on it.” Chapter 7 page 162

[His father] is curious in a way that I find stupid and distressing; I no longer have any real contact with im. It is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. Chapter 7 page 165

The idea of why Paul feels so at home in the beer garden Chapter 7 page

Besides [Paul says] the war may be rather different from what people think. He dismisses the idea loftily and informs me that I know nothing about it. Chapter 7– page 167

The room shall speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong here, I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front that the war will sink down, be drowned utterly…Words, Words, Words—they do not reach me.” Chapter7 page 173

I see Kantorek and am scarcely able to stifle my laughter…The tunic must have belonged to a giant... “Look at Boettcher [the old school janitor] now, there’s a model for you to learn from.” Chapter XVII page 77

What is leave?– A pause that only makes everything after it so much worse.” Chapter 7 page 179

At Kanotrek’s mother’s: “Will you swear it [that he died peacefully]? Yes, he died at once.” Are you willing never to come back yourself if it isn’t true? Chapter 7 page 181

Ah! Mother! How can it be that I must part from you? Here I sit and there you are lying; we have so much to say, and we shall never say it.” Chapter 7 page 184

“Out there I was indifferent and often hopeless—I will never be able to be so again. I was a soldier, and now I am nothing…” Chapter 7 pages 185

Looked at so closely one sees the fine sand is composed of millions of the tiniest pebbles… Chapter 8I page 188

It is strange to see these enemies of ours so close up. They have faces that make one think…They look just as kindly as our own peasants in Friesland.” Chapter 8 page 190

How little we understand one another…I know nothing of them except that they are prisoners. Chapter 8 page

A word of command has made these silent figures [the Russian prisoners] our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends. Chapter 8 pages

Any noncommissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, than they are to us. And yet we would shoot at them again and they at us if they were free. Chapter 8 page 194

I dare think this way no more. This way lies the abyss… Chapter 8 page 194

[Paul’s father:] “If only I knew how much the operation costs,” “Have you not asked?” “Not directly.” Yes, I think bitterly, that’s how it is with us, and with all poor people. They don’t dare ask the price, but worry themselves dreadfully beforehand about it; but the others, for whom it is not important, they settle the price first as a matter of course. Chapter 8 page 197

I have no taste for them [the cakes his mother made for him]. So I go out to give them to the Russians. Then it occurs to me that my mother cooked them herself and the she was probably in pain as she stood before the hot stove. I put the back back in my pack and take only two cakes to the Russians. Chapter 8 page 198